An evening of stories of everyday working class lives and strugglesD.D. Johnston in conversation with local activists will presents his most recent novel The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub and will read extracts from his first book Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs. He will also talk about his involvement in the legendary McDonalds Workers Resistance network, and its relevance for workplace organising today. From its initial organising in McDonalds store in Gorgie, MWR’s influence and connections spread world-wide, linking up with fast food workers from Italy to North America. The meeting will be also an occasion to discuss with other local activist and organizers stories from their working lives (with work defined much broader than paid labour – i.e. claimants, domestic and other unpaid forms of work, students, etc.). If you want to present your story just drop us an email at srl@noflag.org.uk These stories might be funny, inspiring, informative, sad, infuriating – whatever. In particular we are interested on anecdotes and tales of specific incidents you’ve encountered working and resisting work, rather than general political positions.The meeting is co-hosted by Anarchist Federation, Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty, Industrial Workers of the World, Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, Scottish Radical Library, Social Factory Collective.

D.D. Johnston is a novelist and short story writer. He lives in Cheltenham and works at the University of Gloucestershire, where he is a University Teaching Fellow and a senior lecturer in Creative Writing.

His first novel, Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs, featured in The Sunday Herald’s Books of the Year for 2011, as a choice of Helen Fitzgerald, who said “Peace Love & Petrol Bombs, the debut novel by DD Johnston (AK Press, £8.99), is a non-preachy coming-of-age story set amid the complex and chaotic backdrop of anti-capitalist politics. It’s also funny as all hell.” Popmatters wrote, “this genial, engaging, yet serious search for meaning in a commodified global culture deserves wide acclaim” (John L. Murphy). And the Morning Star wrote that “Peace, Love and Petrol Bombs has a very urgent relevance now and for the immediate future” (Paul Simon). Peace, love, &
Petrol Bombs has been recorded as an audio book for audible.com, and is published in Spanish as Paz, amor y cócteles molotov (Hoja de Lata, 2013; translated by Raquel Duato García).

His second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub (Barbican Press, 2013), made the judges’ longlist for the Goldsmith’s Prize and was a 2013 book of the year in The Morning Star, where it was described as “determinedly extraordinary”. The Warwick Review called it “an ambitious, erudite work with a profound interest in the world as we find it,” while Libcom.org described it as “A historical epic, a story about love, revolution and the university, with echoes of Luther Blissett’s Q and a lot
of laughs.”

D.D. Johnston also writes short fiction, and you can read one of his stories, ‘The Invitation’, online in issue six of the Lampeter Review. An earlier version of the story was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.